Music question: Too many albums!

[NorthJersey]

G'day all!
I have two large music folders for classic rock and classic pop; the former with about 750 songs, the latter with over 2000. The tracks are tagged by year and artist name, etc. The problem is when I look at the "Album" view on the iPad I do not see one "Classic Rock" album, as I'd intended. Instead I see about hundreds of "Classic Rock" albums, each with the name of the contributing artist below it. This makes finding traditional albums far more difficult. I know I could just rename all the "Artist" tags to "Various", but that would make it impossible to sort on artists, obviously.

How can I consolidate all this into two albums on my iPad's display (Classic Rock, and Classic Pop)? I use MP3Tag to bulk re-tag files but I'm not sure what to re-tag in this case.

Also, if I do a massive re-tag job on the source directory how can I update that info on iTunes?

 

[twerppoet]

In iTunes, create two Smart Playlists (you'll find the option under Files menu). Make one for your Classic Pop and another for you Classic Rock.

There are two ways to get your songs to appear in them.

One is to set the rules in the Smart Playlist to include or exclude what you want.




Or you can change the Genre by selecting a song or several songs, right clicking, and choosing Get Info from the context menu.


Once you've created your Playlist you select it for syncing. Plug your iPad into the computer and select it under the Devices list in iTunes. Go to the Music tab at the top and change your settings to Selected playlists. . . and choose the playlists you want.



Or if you don't want to bother with the Smart Lists, just create a normal Playlist and drag all the appropriate songs into it; then select and sync as before. The main benefit of the Smart Playlist is that it automatically updates when you add not songs to your library.


If you are having problems with the songs not grouping properly into the right albums, group select all the related songs as I showed for changing the genre, but change the Album name instead. That should put them where they belong.

 

[NorthJersey]

In iTunes, create two Smart Playlists (you'll find the option under Files menu). Make one for your Classic Pop and another for you Classic Rock.
snip
If you are having problems with the songs not grouping properly into the right albums, group select all the related songs as I showed for changing the genre, but change the Album name instead. That should put them where they belong.

I've already done this, but playlists are not the problem. The problem is the reverse of what you describe. Namely, the behaviour I wish to change is when I sort on album. As I rip more and more of my CD collection, I'll be adding an increasingly large number of albums. I want only ONE album entry for Classic Rock in the albums list, not ~500. Ditto for classic pop, although in that case I broke it down by year (Top-100 of 1969, 70, 71, etc). It's still annoying.

Here's a snapshot of what I'm describing:
Hundreds upon hundreds just like that, and similarly for classic pop.

The problem is that I'd LIKE to be able to sort on artist (in fact, that's quite necessary) but having over 500 unnecessary albums is ridiculous.

I could sort by genre but that's not what I need either. I'm old-fashioned and really don't grok the whole playlist thing. I'm more into scrolling albums, just as I used to flip through my vinyl stored in milk crates, select one and play it. I'd rather flip through 75 albums than 575, especially since the unneeded 500 mostly contain just a handful of tracks, or in some cases just one.

 

[twerppoet]

In that case follow the instructions I put my last paragraph, and change the album names in the Get Info information.

To my way of thinking that defeats the purpose of having albums in the first place, but it's all I can think of to do what you seem to want to do. It'll make the album list view pretty much useless.

There are also third-party music players in the app store, some of which use the native music library. One of those might suit you better. It's worth taking a look anyway.

Good luck